She personally sat across from the President of the United States and told him exactly what was being done to her people
She personally sat across from the President of the United States and told him exactly what was being done to her people . He made promises. They evaporated. So she did something no Native American woman had ever done before — she wrote it all down and published it. Her name was Sarah Winnemucca. She was born around 1844 near the Humboldt Sink in what is now Nevada, into the Northern Paiute people, the granddaughter of a respected chief. The name her family called her was Thocmentony — "Shell Flower." She grew up in the violent collision of two worlds. As white settlers pushed west across Paiute land, Sarah did something unusual: she learned their language. Several of them, in fact. By adulthood she was fluent in English and Spanish in addition to Paiute and other Native tongues — and that fluency made her one of the most important interpreters in the region. The U.S. Army used her. The Indian agencies used her. She stood in the middle, translating between a government that w...